The Value of the Lakeview Sit-in and Peopleʼs School for Public Education

A Reflection on the significance of the Lakeview sit-in written by an Oakland teacher and a member of the Occupy Oakland Education Committee

The eighteenth day of the Lakeview Elementary School Sit-in and Peopleʼs School for
Public Education experienced a police raid that successfully shut-down the direct action.
In the early morning, around 4:20am, police – led by Sargeant Barhin Bhatts, the ofﬁcer
responsible for shooting and killing an unarmed Raheim Brown in January 2011- gave
an initial dispersal order and instructed all those looking to be arrested to sit in a
designated area. Two Lakeview community members chose to be arrested, one – a
parent of Lakeview and the other – an alumni and long time Lakeview supporter. All
other supporters were allowed to gather their belongings and leave the premises
without an arrest.

In response, the Education Committee of Occupy Oakland organized a rally just
outside the front gates at Lakeview and a march to an undisclosed location for 5pm that
evening.

The rally featured parents, teachers, and students who participated in the sit-in & Peopleʼs School. The program was a combination of calling out and shaming Tony Smith and the School Board for shutting down such a positive action, and also a call for people to get involved in the organizing against the austerity inspired policies of the Oakland Uniﬁed School District.

There was a militant energy in the air coupled with smoke from dried sage provided by
an indigenous elder supportive of the action. A long time Adult-Education teacher and
veteran education activist credited our action with swaying the School Board to vote
against a proposed 4 million dollar cut to Special Education. He made the point that this
marked the ﬁrst time in three years that the board voted against Tony Smith and felt this
to be a contributing factor in shutting down our efforts. Three candidates for the
upcoming school board elections called on the crowd to support their campaigns to bring about a much needed change for Oaklandʼs Public Schools. Four students from the Peopleʼs School for Public Education called for an end to the police presence and for the people to continue using the building for its intended purpose – public education. More on this point later in the post. The student speeches were very inspiring and were met with loud cheering and applause. An education committee organizer wrapped up the rally with a call-out for everyone to continue actively supporting these types of actions.

After the last speaker, a recently ﬁred OUSD teacher announced there would be a student-led march to Tony Smithʼs house to confront him face-to-face and let his entire neighborhood know just who their neighbor is and what heʼs all about. The march was ﬁlled with militant chants in favor of “education not incarceration” along with music provided by the Occupy Oakland sound team. Upon arriving to Tonyʼs house there were calls for him to “reopen or resign” and a continuation of the rally started back at Lakeview. One of the students from the Peopleʼs School called on Supt. Smith to show his face. Despite him either not being there or else hiding behind the walls of his bourgeois home, it was nonetheless positive to see many of his neighbors outside their homes and supportive of our presence in that neighborhood. All in all it was a vibrant ﬁrst volley in response to the police raid on the Lakeview Sit-in.

Now back to the political nature of this action and the reason why the sit-in was an
extremely important step for the working class , i.e – the use of the building. The UseValue of a commodity is deﬁned as the qualitative aspect of value as opposed to
exchange-value which denotes the quantitative aspect of value. The parents,
teachers, and students reopened the building, a commodity, for its use-value. The
Peopleʼs School for Public Education was holding social justice classes. Members of the
education committee were building a peopleʼs library and were to planning to call it La
Casita II (in honor of the parents who led a successful occupation to keep open a ﬁeld house library on the grounds of Whittier Elementary on Chicagoʼs south side.) The
grounds around the school were being used for lessons in gardening, drumming, sports,
etc. etc. On Sunday July 1st the building was opened up to the wider Oakland
community. The education committee hosted a bbq/potluck followed by a movie
screening of The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman . All these were
arguably qualitative leaps when compared to the day-to-day operation of the former
Lakeview Elementary School. Once the state realized the building was being used not
only for a Peopleʼs School but also as a community space for political education and
culture – they quickly sent their armed thugs to smash the occupation and school.

The state, in this case Superintendent Tony Smith and the School Board, has no
interest in Lakeviewʼs (or any of the other four elementary schools) use-value. These
public schools are being closed because of the exchange value – the value of a
commodity measured in relation to the money form, of their buildings and grounds. Next
year Lakeview, located in an area with high property values, will host administrative ofﬁces. These ofﬁces will be housed there while a brand new administration building is
completed. Once the new building is ready, the district will no doubt look to rent out
Lakeview to a charter school or sell the property to a developer. Santa Fe Elementary,
the last public school in Oaklandʼs 94608 zip code, is being leased to Emeryville. Lazear
Elementary, whose parents and teachers were denied a charter by Oakland Uniﬁed
after the district recommended this course to avoid closure, will be a charter school after
all because the county granted them their charter and OUSD grudgingly allowed them
the use of the building and grounds. Why grudgingly? Because the district intended to
sell the property to Target, and the site was to become another corporate chain store.
Thurgood Marshall and Maxwell Park are both being leased to Charter School
organizations. These closures are not based on anything except Tony Smith and School
Board wanting to generate revenue to balance a public education budget decimated by
austerity. And it just so happens that this ﬁts in with a nationwide trend to dismantle public education in favor of charter schools, which represent the transitional stages for
the ruling class to privatize education across the country.

Use-value over exchange-value is one of many reasons why the Lakeview Sit-in is an extremely important action that should be publicized far and wide. The goals of this action were clear from the beginning – the people taking back what is rightfully theirs and using it for its intended purpose while demanding that the state stop closing neighborhood schools to balance their austerity budgets, stop union-busting, and fully fund free public education. Every urban center in the country that is being bombarded with the same ruling class privatization strategy should hear about the Peopleʼs School for Public Education. The working class must continue and escalate these types of actions. Failure to do so will mean losing access to a major component of our own reproduction — Free Public
Education .